Earlier this month, London-based artist Milein Cosman died at the age of 96. She lived one of those lives that it's hard to imagine being duplicated: fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, learning to be an artist in post-war London, finding her way into the artistic set of the time, marrying musicologist and broadcaster Hans Keller, and having the great good fortune to spend time at rehearsals drawing some of the greatest musicians and composers of the mid-twentieth century, such as Stravinsky, Rostropovich, and Britten.
Speaking as someone whose typical daily listening is (to cite yesterday's playlist alone) Beethoven's late string quartets and Schumann's Dichterliebe, I think my ideal day job would be to sit with a graphite stick and a sketchpad in the rehearsal room of, say, the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
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| Pen and ink drawing of cellist Rostropovich |
She was also a skilful printmaker, and from the 1960s on was a member of the Camden Printmakers group.
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| Lithograph of Stravinsky at the podium |
For a fuller accounting of this fascinating personality, please
read this obituary published in The Guardian.
